Now, while I hate talk talk for their sh*tty service, they do have a very valid point.</p>

The media industries have missed a very big trick by ignoring the internet the way they did for so long and now they are scrambling to try and recover some revenue. I can understand why they want to stop p2p sharing, the apparent loss of revenue, but that depends on who you want to believe this lot who say it's $12.7 BILLION per year or this lot who basically say they made it all up.</p>

The whole notion that a householder is responsible for their network, is ridiculous. From the point of view of a technology professional who has done pen testing, the only way to secure it is to turn the wireless off.</p>

Most home users don't bother to change the encryption from wep to wpa (in my experience most don't even know what encryption is), which isn't infallable in itself, it was always harder to crack but not impossible but now it's a lot easier apparently</p>

Where there is a will there is way and some of the hardcore filesharers will use proxies and encrypted connections, at that point you don't what they are doing just that there is a lot of traffic.</p>

The main things with it are

1. Does every single illegal download really equate to one lost sale?</p>

2.Should it really be the responsiblity of the ISP to shape and determine what type of traffic can be transmitted across the network (bearing in mind the legal uses of this protocol)</p>

And then there's the whole privacy thing, in order to effectively combat it, it's not enough to block ports and shape traffic (you can still download a torrent on a traffic shaping network, just ask anyone with BT, it just takes longer) you need to reconstruct packets yourself to see what they are going to be. Doesn't that go against some sort of privacy law somewhere?</p>

No every single illegal download does not equal a lost sale - especially not a lost sale at the first day of release premium price. It will not even equal a lost sale of the bargain bin January sale Â£3 dvd in Asda.

There are four different types of p2p user:
The Freetard - I wouldn't pay for it, but I will download it.- No sale lost.
The TryB4Buyer - I'll download and if I like I will buy. - Generates a sale -providing the content is actually good.
The collector - I really want this title but it's not for sale so I'll download it. -( Ever tried to get hold of Split Second on DVD? I ended up with a gray market import from Oz) - Not available for sale so how have you lost a sale?
The casual downloader - downloads occasionally, occasionally buys. No difference in purchasing habits no net gain or loss.

Oh and don't forget the "I only torrent Linux distros" yeah right like they really exist....

A tribunal system eh? Funded by the BPI? Funded by the taxpayer.
What is the BPI's 'robust' evidence acquisition system I wonder?

I've never got on with torrents but I used to grab mp3s via Kazaa using a program that scanned the web for puters with the Kazaa port open and then listing the content it found.
The hosts never knowingly knew they were sharing with me as the proxy screened my IP so they could not reciprocally share. (Mean eh?) All they knew was they had a leech eating their bandwidth.
Lots of the music were by bands I'd never heard of before, and oddly enough, I went and bought some of their CDs on the strength of the freebies. So the music industry gained.

Most freebie mp3s I acquire now simply by listening to podcasts and using websites like last.fm where the mp3 downloads to your cache as it plays in the browser.

It seems to me that all the government want is another stick to wave at people who they want to put on the naughty step.

It reminds me of a memoir I read, (Under the Wire by Bill Ash), where the author said that the Gestapo couldn't try (and execute) him for being a nuisance because there weren't grounds in law to do so. So they went off and got a law passed so that they could.

I'm sure ultimately, it will be assumed that every net user is an illegal downloader and thus we will need to pay a license fee to compensate the loss of profits of these poor hard done by companies like Sony Universal and Disney who are really struggling to make ends meet.

Sorry, first post.
Just wanted to say, "Try living in Germany"
The GEZ (German version of the TV license) can now charge you for having a PC in the house. If you have a mobile phone that is Internet capable, that's chargeable too - but (how generous of them) it counts as a "second device.
The fact that one doesn't have a TV card is immaterial - you had a PC therefore you have Internet therefore you can if you want to!